Physical intimate partner violence in India: how much does childhood socialisation matter?

Abstract

While many studies hypothesize gender socialization that glorifies male supremacy and encourages men to adhere to patriarchal norms leads to partner abuse, statistical evidence on this link is scant in low-and middle-income countries. This article bridges this important research gap by exploring the pathways between childhood socialization and intimate partner violence (IPV) in India, using a sub-sample of 5,573 young married men (15-29 years) from a sub-nationally representative survey, 'Youth in India: Situation and Needs (2006-07)'. A considerable proportion of young men acknowledged gender discriminatory practices and reported exposure to parental violence during childhood. We explore associations between these childhood experiences and IPV with binary logistic regression and fit a path model to further investigate the complex interactions between socialization experiences during childhood and IPV in later life. Finally, results from structural equation modelling indicates that presence of gender discriminations in the family and young men growing up in a violent environment have significant effects on holding non-egalitarian gender attitudes and inflicting physical violence in their own marriage. The study highlights the urgent need to understand the determinants of gender attitudes among young men in order to reduce the intergenerational transmission of patriarchal social norms and reduce violence within marriage. The study also underscores the importance of a violence-free and gender-neutral family environment during boys' and girls' formative years and further calls for a comprehensive program to efficiently address gender inequality and normalization of violence at the family level, to promote positive parenting, and to eliminate IPV.